Weapons

What a masterpiece! Unique, great, super interesting & very well executed horror movie. Loved it very much!

If a horror flick hopes to succeed, it must fulfill one basic requirement – it has to be scary. Regrettably, however, that’s where the latest offering from writer-director Zach Cregger drops the ball, a downfall brought on by a host of other shortcomings. The film chronicles the mysterious overnight disappearance of all but one student from the third grade class of newly hired teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). While there’s no direct evidence implicating her in this troubling event, she quickly becomes a target for scrutiny and ridicule, particularly since none of the other elementary school’s classes reported any missing pupils. Officials are at a loss, and the only one of Ms. Gandy’s students who did not vanish, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), is unable to shed any light on why he was spared the same fate as his classmates. As the investigation continues, Justine’s background – most notably her penchant for alcohol abuse and her tendency to become too involved in the lives of her students – comes under closer examination by the police, the school principal (Benedict Wong) and the father of one of the disappeared children (Josh Brolin). The story is told in a nonlinear fashion with chapters based on the experiences of the film’s primary characters, with each segment gradually (one might more realistically say tediously) revealing different pieces of an enigmatic puzzle as seen from their respective perspectives. Admittedly, this is an interesting and commendable approach for telling the tale, one not typically employed in horror films. However, that narrative is also part of the problem, given that it’s slowly paced and sparsely frightful. It’s also seriously lacking a much-needed revelatory back story, leaving viewers wondering why events are unfolding as they do (and, consequently, leaving them unsure why they should care, either). As the picture plays out, it also loses focus, uncertain whether it wants to be a sinister thriller or a sidesplitting campy romp (I’ll vote for the latter option here, as that seems to be when the picture works best, especially with the arrival of Alex’s mysterious Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), who bears an uncanny and inexplicable resemblance to Bozo the Clown). All things considered, though, these elements don’t hang together well, and, as the film drones on and on, it’s easy to lose interest, especially since the rationale behind them is largely unclear. What’s more, several passing plot devices of a questionably stereotypical nature have been incorporated here as well, leaving one to ponder the reason for their inclusion. “Weapons,” unfortunately, is yet another example of a supposedly scary movie gone wrong, one that fails at its basic task and doesn’t deliver the goods on so many other fronts. Maybe the time has come for Hollywood to give this genre a rest for a while so that it can work out its growing list of issues before production begins on a round of more underwhelming, overhyped releases like this one.

It’s a bit like a wheel with lots of spokes, this mystery. It starts with a scenario in which seventeen kids all get out of bed at precisely 2.17 am, leave their well-appointed homes, only to never been seen again. The cops are baffled and the parents are suspicious. Of what? Well, they were all from the same class of “Justine” (Julia Garner) and the only other pupil to turn up next day: “Alex” (Cary Christopher). What has she done with them all? What does she know? We start with a telling of events from her point of view, then next it’s the perspective of angry parent “Archer” (Josh Brolin) to weave his part of the web; then policemen “Paul” (Alden Ehrenreich); her boss “Marcus” (Benedict Wong) and then, finally, we get the perspective of the only “surviving” pupil who has recently welcomed his eccentric aunt “Gladys” (Amy Madigan) who is apparently on death’s door, and who seems somewhat distracted as he comes to school. Is that because his classmates have all gone awol or maybe he knows more than we think? To be honest, there’s not so much mystery here, but there are some solidly entertaining performances and for the first hour or so, quite a bit of intriguing menace too. The overlaying of each story takes us from similar timelines of the puzzle but never repetitively. Each one of these people has a demon of their own, they are connected to some of the others and not to others, and the whole unravelling process becomes more of a study of small time communities, attitudes and superstitions as it sort of shakes off it’s horror cloak and becomes something altogether more rushed and predictable. Garner, Christopher and Madigan deliver quite well, but Brolin is about as charismatic as a tent pole and as he starts to feature more in the denouement he does rather encourage you to hope that he goes the way of the missing kids. It’s very much at the better end of the genre from 2025 so far, but it still can’t sustain the mysterious “Pied Piper” sense of peril through to an ending that is hardly original.